Re: devfs and udev

Måns Rullgård
2003-10-07T13:32:20Z

Bradley Chapman <kakadu_croc@yahoo.com> writes:

> I think the two things which really prevented devfs from working were:

It's always worked just fine for me.

> 1. The namespace was too different from the original and required additional
> configuration to maintain compatibility (devfsd and changes to core /etc
> files.)

Since when do Linux developers resist changes?

> 2. Devfs was not immediately picked up my the major distros, which meant that
> any moderate end-user who wanted to use it would have to be careful when
> setting it up or risk massive core breakage due to the changed device nodes
> (initscripts failing and the like).

Had it been pushed harder, they probably would have done it.

> I used it for a very long time, personally; it was a good idea, and it had
> potential. If the namespace that had been used was the same flat namespace as
> the original /dev, it would have probably taken off. As it is, I think udev
> is the new way of doing this (I haven't used it yet).

The different naming was one thing i liked about devfs. Go read the
archives from a couple of years ago, and see that the exact same
arguments that were used to promote devfs, are now said to be bad
things. This sudden change is what I don't understand, and how the
not-working udev is supposed to be able to replace devfs.

--
Måns Rullgård
mru@users.sf.net